Art at Florim

We believe that our work is not limited to industrial operations, but must reach beyond the dictates of business alone to embrace corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business ethics. It was with this approach that Florim joined forces with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and started a new collaboration to actively support and promote exceptionally beautiful artistic heritage.

Our attention to people, art and beauty is also conveyed through workspaces. We describe our headquarters through its locations. Florim offers a journey into Italian expertise that contains and recounts the ingredients that shape our idea of beauty.

We begin with an unexpected encounter with a bronze sculpture: “Il Cavallo” (The Horse) by Mimmo Paladino. Located at the entrance to the company, the work welcomes visitors with a proud greeting.

“Il Cavallo” by Mimmo Paladino

An impressive bronze artwork created by Mimmo Paladino, a well-known Italian exponent of the Transavantgarde. The Transavantgarde is an artistic movement that arose in the late 1970s based on a notion conceived by critic Achille Bonito Oliva in the wake of the economic crisis that characterised this decade and reduced Italy’s productive and cultural optimism. A movement of transition, cultural nomadism and painting revival, it aimed to overcome the abstract-conceptual language of the neo-avant-garde movement through a return to traditional pictorial materials and techniques and a representation with an Expressionist approach, sometimes involving the revival of past motifs and forms. The Transavantgarde theorised a return to the manual skill, joy and colours of painting after several years of domination by conceptual art.

Mimmo Paladino

Domenico Paladino (Mimmo) was born in Paduli (Benevento) in 1948. His uncle Salvatore, a painter, encouraged his interest in art. He attended the artistic high school in Benevento from 1964 to 1968. His statues consist of icons, ancient masks and geometric designs: a kind of alphabet of signs that cyclically returns. He often draws on Etruscan and Samnite art. Its simple shapes give his work an ancient look. Paladino is dedicated to sculpture, painting, photography and engraving: etching, aquatint, linocut and woodcut. He also creates installations for churches, squares and buildings in the area. The theatre is another place where his work can be found: he has been actively involved in set design. He has even ventured into cinema (in 2005, he directed “Quijote”, which focuses on Cervantes’ character). Mimmo Paladino is one of the most successful representatives of the Transavantgarde movement (promoted by critic Achille Bonito Oliva), along with Sandro Chia, Enzo Cucchi, Francesco Clemente, Nicola De Maria and others who joined later. Paladino’s works are now permanently located in some of the main international museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

PERCORSO AMOROSO by Giuseppe Gallo 

“Percorso Amoroso” (Path of love), located on the west side of the new 4.0 factory in Fiorano, is a bronze sculpture created by Giuseppe Gallo in 2004. The majestic work (6.6×3.7×1.8 m) uses bronze as a skin that is always different and taut, absorbing and regenerating light. The 5 elements that make up the “path of love” follow each other in succession, drawing an imaginary circle. The dance of the 5 figures must repeat exactly 5 times to create a perfect circle. The sculpture is thus designed as a circular work that moves in infinite time and can be read from right to left or from left to right in a perpetual discourse like the discourse of love. If the circle were closed there would be a female sculpture inside and a male sculpture outside.

The hand, which differentiates man from animals, is one of Gallo’s favourite symbols. The hand represents power and also the artist’s hand, which, in the work, points towards the dromedary. The fingers reflect an inner attitude, a return to the beginning of sculpture and to the beginning of the path, because love ends and then starts all over again. The circle is a large curved mirror. Through a hole placed at the height of the ear, once seated the two lovers can listen without seeing each other and, as a pure image of their love, they can receive the breath of speech.

The figure of the armless philosopher in the position of a dance nipped in the bud is a recurring image in Gallo’s works. The figure always has its left foot further forward than its right foot on the ground and its head bent forward with its chin resting on its chest. In this work, Gallo depicts the lunar philosopher, the philosopher par excellence, suspended in a position of maximum concentration. The tripod is a figure linked to the proclamation of the oracle, a container with 3 feet that was placed on the fire to heat water and was offered as a gift to the gods. Tripods rested on 3 feet and the presence of the number 3 is the image of fire and sky. In the suspended cavity that collects water in “Percorso amoroso”, there is a hole from which water flows and from where you can observe the sky from below. Here, on 14th February, the sun, crossing the hole with its rays, strikes a stone on the ground like a sun dial, marking Valentine’s Day. For Gallo, the Dromedary is the symbol of the desert, in Greek “erimos”, which was the place where the first Christian monks retired to confront their own nature and that of the world with only God’s help. Desert as an autopsic path to asceticism, to the conquest of perfection.

Giuseppe Gallo

Giuseppe Gallo was born in March 1954 in Rogliano (Cosenza) and has made painting a tool for daily poetry. He has practised, from the very beginning, sculpture with curiosity and without haste, with the naturalness of the inevitable step, though seemingly casual and irreverent. Sculpture is inherent in Gallo’s work, as though it has sprung from the depths of the drawing and has then entered as a logical and natural act in space. For Gallo, the question, under these multiple forms, is always open. He is a philosopher, the Filosofo (Philosopher) of 1986 or the more “melancholic” 2004 version, as well as still being the satirical charmer who mastered his Flauto magico (Magic flute) at the Venice Biennale (1990).

IL TEMPO È NOSTRO AMICO, Olivo Barbieri

Immense waterfalls – the most beautiful in the world – are the focus of a series of photographs created by Olivo Barbieri for Florim entitled “IL TEMPO È NOSTRO AMICO” (Time is on our side). This slogan was launched with Floor Gres in the ’60s and now effectively encapsulates the company’s values: strength over time, invention and the ability to always keep abreast of the needs of contemporary design and architecture. The project, which also featured in a Floor Gres press campaign (2007/2008), offers a round-the-world flight over the most beautiful waterfalls on earth. Olivo Barbieri decided to create a series of photographs based on the images of 4 waterfalls located on the borders of different continents: Victoria Falls (Zambia/Zimbabwe), Iguazù Falls (Argentina/Brazil), Khone Falls (Laos/Cambodia) and Niagara Falls (Canada/USA).

The waterfalls are moving surfaces, a metaphor for constantly regenerating life and matter. Globally recognised icons, a message of sustainability and environmental awareness. In this sense, the waterfalls embody Florim’s identity because the brand’s values convey a very positive message for the environment. Its products dialogue with nature and are able to interpret it. In addition to these images, other famous shots by the artist are displayed at Florim: Shanghai Pudong (1997), Rome (1987), Pisa (1992), Osaka (1992) and Shanghai (1997).

Olivo Barbieri

Olivo Barbieri was born in Carpi (Modena) in 1954. In the early ’70s he attended the Pedagogy and Drama, Art and Music Studies faculties in Bologna and during these years he developed an interest in photography. His research initially focused on artificial lighting in urban and architectural centres. Olivo Barbieri, who specialises in photography of urban environments, has made films and published several books and catalogues devoted to this subject. He is known for his landscape miniaturisation effect, achieved through the use of selective focusing to create blurs similar to those of macro photography. Often it is a seemingly blurred detail, a slight misrepresentation, which shows us that his photo is not a cast, it does not reproduce reality, it does not document it in a lifeless manner, but offers us an original vision. Barbieri is now internationally renowned: he has won several awards and has exhibited his works in numerous group and solo exhibitions both in Italy and abroad.

ALTA DEFINIZIONE, Luca Pancrazzi 

The “Alta Definizione” (High Definition) project, designed and produced under the direction of Luca Pancrazzi, is based on the loss and reconstruction of the image through the breakdown of reality. Two large panels made with Casamood’s glass mosaic transform the space into a high-definition place in which the artist reclaims his idea of urban landscape by recreating, through materials and colours, a “mood” of sequences of contemporary reality. Glimpses of metropolises, skyscrapers, busy main roads, chimneys and cranes towering in the background: these are the images of everyday life that accompany the display created within the room. The viewer is projected into everyday reality, involved in scenes that they have already seen and experienced, but which they rediscover through the deconstruction of borders and their gradual reconstruction.

Luca Pancrazzi

Luca Pancrazzi was born in Figline Valdarno (Florence) in 1961. The artist attended the Florence Academy of Fine Arts and then moved to Milan, where he has lived and worked since 1994. Following “Where: Allegories of Site in Contemporary Art” at the Whitney Museum in New York, his participation at the Venice Biennale and “Minimalia” (Venice and New York), the artist has exhibited at several solo shows in Europe and the United States. Luca Pancrazzi’s work harmonises various approaches to making art: although his work is based on a strong pictorial foundation, the Tuscan artist absorbs both sculpture and photography within this tradition. Moreover, consideration of space is not only one of his work’s favourite subjects, but is also evident in the way Pancrazzi often adapts his creations to the surrounding world.

HOTEL CHIMERA (CAPSULE COLLECTION) by Elena Salmistraro

A heterogeneous ensemble of elements of different origin and nature which, when combined, form a unique ceramic work of almost 20 square meters. A figurative artistic expression composed of 80 disparate fragments each of which is an abstract work in its own right, a piece numbered and hand-signed by Elena Salmistraro.

This is the concept of the work conceived by the Milanese designer, which revisits Hotel Chimera both graphically and symbolically. It is a space for escape and flight from reality, an imaginative venue stemming from a multi-faceted blend of elements.

Just like the figure of the Chimera – whose body in Greek mythology included parts of different animals – this 480x400cm work consists of 80 ceramic components measuring 40x60cm. Each individual piece conceals a subtle watermark that narrates the design of the work in its entirety. A reproduction of the work, faithful to the original in terms of both design and size, is on display in Florim Gallery.

Elena Salmistraro

Elena Salmistraro was born in Milan in 1983 and graduated in Industrial Design from the Milan Polytechnic in 2008. The following year, again in her native city and together with the architect Angelo Stoli, she founded her own professional practice in which she devoted herself to product design and architectural project planning. The originator of a highly recognizable stylistic trait, Elena is engaged in the development of research work that straddles illustration, design and the visual arts, through which she seeks to codify an expressive language connoted by strong extroversion and an eagerness to stir emotion. Her projects have been selected for display in major events, including The New Italian Design traveling exhibition (with stops in Milan, San Francisco, Santiago de Chile and Cape Town), The New Aesthetic Design collective exhibition at the 2013 Shanghai Biennale, and the 2015 Gwangju Biennale in South Korea.

In 2016, on the occasion of the XXI International Exhibition of the Triennale Di Milano, Elena took part in the W. Women in Italian Design exhibition and in 2017-2018 was appointed Ambassador of Italian Design in the World.

ARCHEOLOGIE by Franco Guerzoni

“Archeologie” is the result of an original work specially created by Franco Guerzoni for CEDIT. It is expressed in a series of flat ceramic slabs with complex backgrounds, with dense pigmentations and accumulations, powdered colours and chalky materials, resembling the “stripping” method of fresco creation. Inspired by the idea that “a wall is like a book to be opened”, with Archeologie the artist uses large ceramic surfaces as a medium for his pictorial language, made up of visual signs intended to stimulate “a journey into the interior, revealing the experiences, memories, signs and symbols the wall has absorbed over the centuries”.

Franco Guerzoni

Franco Guerzoni (Modena, 1948), artist, has focused since the early ’70s on producing works that recount a personal exploration of the world of archaeology, concentrating in particular on the stratifications of culture and the ideal of the “antique” as loss and absence. He adopts precise systems for representing images, also using photography. In the ’80s he produced large paper wall hangings investigating the idea of an imaginary geography, while in 1990 he presented his Decorazioni e rovine project in a personal exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Since the ’90s, he has continued his investigation of time and the poetics of ruins with an interpretative approach that creates a kind of “archaeology with no restoration”. Since 2006 he has transferred his painting to walls themselves, nourishing the idea of a form of “mural” painting that pursues the relationship with space, architecture and time, using pigment as a tool for revelation, discovery and the expression of memory, a strong presence that emerges almost lyrically from the white surface.